Dandelion down: Catching innovation in our classrooms
No idea is unique. The difference is what we do with our dandelion-down thoughts that fly by while we are doing other things. Most of us ignore them. Maybe we should be showing our students the simple step of wetting a finger to catch fleeting ideas before they escape. The wet finger is the difference that innovators share. While temporarily stuck to the tip of a moistened finger, that downy seed is ours for a moment to do with what we wish. We might carefully plant it to watch it grow. We might simply allow it to dry and blow away again. But once it is gone, it belongs to anyone and no one.
A week ago, I mused in a post about a new way to “track” what we learn in a post-post-secondary education world. A few weeks earlier, I posted about the trade-offs we make, giving our privacy to Google. My musings were certainly not unique. Within the last day or two, I have read about a potentially new way to preserve privacy — even from Google — and a start-up that hopes to containerize what we learn from open sources of “education.” My fleeting, dandelion-down ideas most certainly did not implant themselves so quickly into others’ blossoming flower pots, but we all know how ubiquitous dandelions are! Someone else had these same ideas and took the time to wet a finger.
In our classrooms, we cannot see the dandelion down blowing about all those heads. In our society, often we mistake dandelions for weeds. But we secretly love to see the first dandelions come up in spring, a sign of new life and a warm summer to come. We need to ask about the ideas our students allow to escape — or leave at home because school does not value them. As we let fly our own new ideas, we need to pause, wet-fingered, to publicly give them a chance in front of our students. We need to think aloud about them and model capturing them into blog posts or idea bins or sketchbooks or voice bubbles or — something. Not every idea is worth keeping, but none of us can decide that in the short time it takes for them to fly away.
If we have one great, untapped resource, it is all the ideas that fly away from our classrooms, ignored. STEM education is supposed to promote innovation, but ANY classroom can. Have you caught any dandelion down today?
